It is possible for disruptions to occur at the winding stations of cheese-producing textile machines during the process of rewinding spinning cops into cheeses of large volume, which disruptions prevent the orderly complete unwinding of the spinning cops. Cop tubes with insufficient yarn remaining to be worth unwinding must be completely cleaned, i.e., the remaining yarn must be removed, before they can be returned to the spinning/winding process.
This cleaning process is carried out by applying a tool to the tubes and displacing the tool parallel with the tubes. It is necessary accordingly to exactly center the tubes, which typically are standing on transport plates, because otherwise there would be the danger that the tubes would be damaged.
A device is known, for example, from German Patent Publication DE 41 31 667 A1, wherein the remaining yarn is loosened by a stripper displacable along the tube and is subsequently suctioned off. In the process the spinning cops stand upright on the arbors of disk-shaped support bodies, which are conveyed over conveyor belts into the area of the cleaning device of the winding machine and are also conveyed away again over appropriate transport tracks.
The tube is centered during the removal of the remaining yarn from the tube so that the cleaning tool can operate optimally by being exactly placed relative to the tube, and the tube is not lifted off the support body in the course of stripping off the remaining yarn.
In this case a centering arbor used for this centering function must be matched in its length and diameter to the respective type of tubes. The material of the tubes must also be considered, since with sensitive tubes there is the danger that the arbor could widen the tube tip.
The cleaning device known from DE 41 31 667 A1 has a centering device which is adjusted or exchanged according to each respective batch, i.e., matched to a defined tube length and to a defined tube diameter. If a fresh batch is to be wound and the length of the tubes changes in the process, the centering device must be readjusted manually. If the diameter and/or the material of the tubes is changed, the centering means must be replaced. With plastic tubes the centering means customarily is a centering arbor which tapers in a conical shape toward a tip end of the arbor, while sensitive cardboard tubes are acted on by exterior centering means, which taper conically toward the top and are pushed over the tube.
It is furthermore disadvantageous in connection with this known device that in cases in which the winding machine is occupied by several batches having two or more different tubes circulating at the same time in the machine, these tubes cannot be processed in a common cleaning station if they differ in their length, their diameter and/or their material.
Cheese-producing textile machines can also have other processing stations besides the described tube cleaning devices, where centering of the tube during the processing steps is necessary.
Centering of the tubes is also advantageous during processing in cop preparation stations, where the reserve winding of ring spinning cops is released and the yarn end is placed in readiness for the subsequent rewinding process.